Nancy Nordenson graduated from the Seattle Pacific MFA program in 2007 with a concentration in creative nonfiction. Her work has received notable recognition in Best American Essays 2010 and a Pushcart nomination, and has appeared in Harpur Palate, Comment, Under the Sun, Relief, and Desert Call. One of her essays was included in the anthology The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God (Cascade Press, 2010), which was edited by Leslie Leyland Fields, who is on the MFA program’s creative nonfiction faculty. Another essay is forthcoming in the anthology Becoming, to be published by the University of Nebraska. Nancy is also a medical writer and the author of Just Think: Nourish the Mind to Feed the Soul (Baker, 2004).

Nancy had this to say about her experience in Seattle Pacific University’s MFA program:

“At the outset, my primary goal in enrolling in the program was to become a better writer. My secondary goal was to deepen and broaden my understanding of faith and how it informs and is informed by art. By the end of the first residency, I began to realize just how deeply these goals were intertwined. Better writing necessitated a deeper and broader spiritual sensibility, and visa versa. The program’s Art and Faith foundation undergirds writing in the sense that writing becomes a spiritual way of living. When I started the program, I expected to learn to write, but I did not expect such a profound experience of learning to live.”